In a conversation with a friend about magic and its quality over the years, i made a joke that i couldn't really talk since i'd played l5r during what i thought was widely regarded as the worst l5r arc, lotus. he's a newer player but he argued it couldn't possible have been worse than ivory. which caused me to wonder: the last time i really engaged in this conversation was probably during CE, when i had a stable in person playgroup. Now that the CCG is basically wrapped up, this seems like a good time to reopen the topic.

what, in your opinion are the best arcs in the history of l5r? the worst? i think i'm speaking hear of mechanics. storyline is a pretty different conversation, i think.

1. Clan Wars
2. Jade
3. Gold
4. Diamond
5. Lotus
6. Samurai
7. Celestial
8. Emperor
9. Ivory

I started at the end of Gold, played through lotus, took off samurai, came back the very end of celestial, and played through the end.

to preface my opinion, i am a legitimately AWFUL player. i build just hilariously bad decks. theme decks. janky decks. that said, for me Diamond was a blast. Most of my favorite deck types (some of the best dueling decks, maho chi kill, tsuruchi ranged madness) and strongholds (castle of the wasp, kakita dueling academy, and my #1 temple of the ninth kami) were during that era. Second to that i would say is CE. Kyuden Suzume remains, to this day, some of the most fun i've ever had playing spider, CE paragons were some of my favorite spider personalities of all time, and it also had the most trollerific personality spider ever got: FOSUTA. this is all despite the fact that i never even played our best deck, breeder.

Mechanically:

1. Samurai

2. Emperor

3. Ivory (or better say Twenty Festivals, because 1st part was dull)

4. Celestial

5. Lotus

That's all, i've started at late Lotus.

Storyline is definitely another conversation (one I'd love to spark with next week's All Aboard the Nostalgia Train), but in terms of sheer mechanics, well....

Clan War: Quick and quirky. Fun to play, but you had to keep track of a lot of information. Keeping in mind how nascent CCGs were at the time, it was surprisingly well-developed and balanced - sort of. Looking through the lens of modern game design, it was not balanced a bit; however, it was just so much fun to play you didn't really care.

Jade Era: Creaky and over-stuffed. A few themes started to emerge, but I stopped buying (never stopped playing, though) during this era because of how conceptually obtuse a lot of the design was. By the end of this era, there were so many factions that it was tough to find a real solid identity.

Side Note: Hidden Emperor and Spirit Wars were big missteps in terms of power; if you weren't playing Ninja in the former and Spirits in the latter, you were at a tactical disadvantage.

Gold: I may be in the minority here, but I really liked Gold. Things were simplified, the game was slowed down (at least at the beginning), clear identities for the clans were codified... I really liked it.

Diamond: Weird. Some glorious weirdness, some frustrating weirdness... Diamond was surprising, quick, and rewarded expert deck construction. I'll leave it at this: I like the ideas, if not the execution, behind the design.

Lotus: Hoo boy. Lots of people are probably going to hate on Lotus, and I'm not going to argue. Except to say this: there is a tendency in game design to equate complication with good game design - I like to call it The Decipher Folly. This era was over-complicated for the sake of over-complication, which can lead to some fun choices and design ideas, but it's hard to like.

Samurai: A return to smash-mouth L5R. It did away with most of the complication issues of the earlier blocks, but did nothing about the speed. Samurai was fast and brutal, and it was a blast as long as you were ready for it.

Celestial: Celestial also catches a lot of flak, but I really enjoyed the environment. I think it helped that I was simply playing in a local group, not trying to compete with the nationwide cheese that emerged in this era. What can I say, I liked it.

Emperor: Again, I liked Emperor, but I get why other people didn't. My group tends to play in very self-limited environments (one reason why we're looking forward to the LCG model so much!), and we played in an extremely limited card-pool for Emperor. For most of us, it was a "1-deck, 3-packs, go!" era, and we had a blast.

Ivory: And finally, we come to Ivory. I hesitate to eulogize here, but I really think that Ivory may have been the most balanced and well-designed base set that AEG made. Everyone was viable, there wasn't an overabundance of truly vile cheese... honestly, at least for me, it was golf-claps all around.

Twenty Festivals - Not an era of its own, certainly, but did an excellent job of adding to Ivory's format without warping the environment - a classic example of "positive addition" in game design.

And I'm not sure if anyone else has done this, but my group liked to do a "Doors of Heaven" format, where you are allowed to mix cards from any era (with some restrictions, otherwise it would be madness), and those are so much fun. I still have that "0 Banned, 0 Restricted" sales flyer sitting around somewhere...

Ivory: And finally, we come to Ivory. I hesitate to eulogize here, but I really think that Ivory may have been the most balanced and well-designed base set that AEG made. Everyone was viable , there wasn't an overabundance of truly vile cheese... honestly, at least for me, it was golf-claps all around....

*cough* Not really.

Mechanically? I really enjoyed Celestial, and I liked where Twenty Festivals was taking us out of the wilderness of Ivory.

Emperor had some degenerate insanity, but nothing we weren't able to cope with at first- I can honestly say that I LOVED early Emperor.But then it just went on and on,snowballing into ever-increasing lunacy.

Ivory was godawful, not because it wasn't balanced (although ask a Phoenix, Spider, or Mantis player what they thought of the overall balance when Ivory dropped and we might laugh until you're soaked in our spit) but because it was incredibly, incredibly BORING. Force Pump Edition was not a fun card game.

I missed most of the earlier arcs, but late Samurai seemed to be a wretched hive of Crane and villainy.

Ivory: And finally, we come to Ivory. I hesitate to eulogize here, but I really think that Ivory may have been the most balanced and well-designed base set that AEG made. Everyone was viable , there wasn't an overabundance of truly vile cheese... honestly, at least for me, it was golf-claps all around....

*cough* Not really.

Ivory was godawful, not because it wasn't balanced (although ask a Phoenix, Spider, or Mantis player what they thought of the overall balance when Ivory dropped and we might laugh until you're soaked in our spit) but because it was incredibly, incredibly BORING. Force Pump Edition was not a fun card game.

Fair enough. I actually liked where the Phoenix, Spider, and Mantis designs were going, but I can see your point. That's one of the great things about this game - one person's garbage is another's sweet-smelling bouquet.

As to being boring, I had never thought of it that way - though after hearing your perspective, it may have been an over-correction on the part of the designers after Emperor. Emperor did get pretty nuts toward the end. And I'm with you on Twenty Festivals - if nothing else, it was certainly making things more interesting!

To me, L5R has always been a game of three beats - you get a fun environment that gets unbalanced, then a degenerate environment, then as backlash to that a slow, boring one. Then the devs start pushing things a bit more, getting a fun environment again, which as they push more and more turns unbalanced, leading to a degenerate environment, leading to a backlash...

Imperial - Fun/Unbalanced

Jade - Degenerate

Gold - Boring except the base set

Diamond - Fun/Unbalanced

Lotus - Degenerate

Samurai - Boring, including the base set. First time I got knocked out of the game by sheer boredom.

Celestial - Fun/Unbalanced

Emperor - Degenerate

Ivory - Boring

20F - Didn't last long enough to make up my mind

The fun-that-gets-unbalanced environment have always been my favorites - Imperial, Diamond and Celestial. Then the degenerate ones which at least were swingy And, finally, the boring ones. Which felt like watching paint dry, both during gameplay, and watching new expansions come in without a single interesting card in the whole mix.

Of the fun/unbalanced ones, I probably prefered Imperial, but all of them were great, except late Diamond when Design got bored and started throwing us nonsense boxes like Shiro Kit, Orochi and Ninja Flip

i really enjoyed playing emperor in my local playgroup, but not buying cards for it or the tournament scene. in its defense at lease they solved the promo thing. deck building in CE was both expensive and by the end a bit boring for tournament decks. Netdecking was required, promos were required, and half your deck was a foregone conclusion. wanna make a military deck? guess i'll pull out the same 20 military promos EVERY military deck needs to be competitive. i literally had a text file called "l5r_mil_deck_starter".

as a spider player, it was also GRIM. emperor and ivory were dark times for spider. for all we had a few interesting themes, and a few fun decks (the shadow's lair is arguably one of the most mechanically interesting strongholds the spider ever got, if not THE most interesting. i built a ton of fun decks with it, and i bet its AMAZING in open/modern) by and large spider were COMPLETELY HOSED. way behind the power curve with inconsistent design and autolose matchups. the fact that design kept this up for two whole sets was... disheartenting.

To me, L5R has always been a game of three beats - you get a fun environment that gets unbalanced, then a degenerate environment, then as backlash to that a slow, boring one. Then the devs start pushing things a bit more, getting a fun environment again, which as they push more and more turns unbalanced, leading to a degenerate environment, leading to a backlash...

thats a pretty interesting observation, and holds water as far as my experiences go.

Imperial->ToV: Nostalgia Goggles demand I call this the best. It was certainly the game at its purest, when it was supposed to be *done* after ToV. But then art made way for money, and we got the following arc. The end of this arc is the first major loss of players, with many considering the continuance of the story a betrayal of the core purpose of the game. A

Jade: Wildly imbalanced, added a lot of fun cards to general play, but also introduced various cancer decks and the JadeEx format, which was horrible. Oh, and Jade existing ruined any hope Legend of the Burning Sands had for success. Wizards *did* do a good job of cleaning up effect text when they picked up the game though, and the tournaments were much better run. C

Pearl: Why god why. Much more boring design followed this set than filled the Jade arc, but at least it didn't produce as many soul-crushing format warping cards. This entire arc felt like a knee-jerk overreaction to Dark Journey Home being busted. The one bright point in this arc's design was the introduction of Sensei with a variety of interesting effects. Also introduced the Direct to Player set, which would later become the bane of retailers and home to ludicrously powerful staples for years to come; first one was pretty benign though, you only really needed it if you wanted to play Ratling, or wanted to play Lion in Gold base set. The lull between this arc and Gold produced the second major loss of players. C, your greatest crime is being boring.

Gold: Was jazzed to have the game back, and the core-set only gameplay was actually really good. Which is a redeeming point, since the expansions didn't really do much to add on to that gameplay. This is the only arc where sets came out that I never bought a booster pack from, because the sets were such total garbage. This turned around in a big way when the dual-bugged sets hit. Campsite+Flattery was an incredibly irritating "thing." C

Diamond: This arc was pretty bad for Honor players for the bulk of its time, but for military, control, and dishonor it had some of the absolute best gameplay the game has ever had. Definite spike in power-level after gold, making the expansions feel desirable, and new cards interesting. A

Lotus: This edition really fractures the player-base. It was a fantastically fun edition for deckbuilders and tournament players, with dozens of competitive archetypes and interesting ways to approach the metagame. For the casual player, it was a nightmare mess of powerlevels in excess of 9000, and that was *before* TOE added the Mantis Mercenary Murder Machine to the equation. This arc caused the third major loss of players. In my heart, I have to give this edition an A for the variety of victory conditions, deck-types, and concepts it brought to the competitive table, but I have to give it a C for making casual players pick up their balls and go home. Oh, and Open Lotus Playtesting was an absolute joke. "PLS BUFF CRAEN DUELZ 2 WEEK"

Samurai Edition: Power level spikes down again, but not too far down, and complexity is maintained. Samurai Edition started to recover the players lost in the Lotus Casual Nightmare. The edition was overall very enjoyable to play in, with good representation of a multitude of decks and victory conditions. If I had to pick a "healthiest" block for L5R, it would probably be Samurai up until the last few sets. Although Samurai does bear the sin of beginning the "token personality" push that was utterly ill-conceived in a game with L5R's mechanics, but that particular turdblossom wouldn't full bloom until Celestial Edition. I believe this was Bryan Reese's first arc, and he did a fine job here if it was. A

Celestial Edition: Breeder, Goblins, Celestials introduced as "EVEN MOAR POWERFUL EVENTS!" and a host of other card designs that would later harpoon Emperor Edition's chances of success, pretty much earned this edition the mark of Miserable Design Choices. I will however say in the positive, this is the edition that really did a lot for making non-token Attachments a real card type again. Followers, Weapons, even Armor, all had their day in the sun in Celestial, which was a good move. This is is the only arc to get me to say "I've had enough of this" and sit out half the arc, so I've got a pretty dim view of the whole affair. D

Emperor Edition: Best rules changes/templating changes, undermined by terrible play balance. The change to spells were great... as long as you get rid of Double Bugged spells like Strength of the Tsunami that were very obviously designed without an inkling of the thought of the spell changes in mind. This is the edition design decided "Hey, those old designers made free gold in Clan War, and everyone loved it! And we're way better at design than those guys, so let's just throw a bunch of free gold at the wall and see what sticks!" The edition of a billion bans, mostly because they kept refusing to ban the root problems, and instead banned symptom cards.... then later printed MORE free **** that synergized with the root problems. This entire edition was a trainwreck, but its greatest sin was causing AEG to "distance" themselves from the edition's good aspects (the rules, a lot of the not-free-**** design space) in the move to Ivory. The edition even had a token-deck that wasn't cancer! The tokens were interesting, different, and didn't flood the board in piles of a hundred! A for Rules, C for gameplay

Ivory: My last edition with the game. Got added to Design team for a while when it was in pre-production, but it wasn't the game I thought I was being added for. A lot of really good ideas in a vacuum, that didn't hold up when you only went halfway through the changes they required to function. The decision to go down to 1 stronghold per clan per arc really made me sad, as strongholds are pretty much the most interesting, game-changing aspect of L5R card sets. Sensei were supposed to replace additional strongholds, but it's difficult to design a Sensei with the same level of tailored support that you can a Stronghold, especially when some sensei are intended to be used across multiple factions; the fact that they had to print multiple sensei that blank your box shows how awkward they are. The intentionally powered-down, limited toolset of things personalities could do also really killed it for me. I left the game entirely with this edition, and pretty much would have never bought another AEG-produced L5R set. C, because despite it failing to save the game and actively pushing me away from it, the edition did take bold (if mistaken) steps towards trying to fix the underlying problems with the game.

Jade: Wildly imbalanced, added a lot of fun cards to general play, but also introduced various cancer decks and the JadeEx format, which was horrible. Oh, and Jade existing ruined any hope Legend of the Burning Sands had for success.

As far as I can tell from being on the LBS team at the time (both at AEG and then at Wizards), it was Ryan Dancey's incredibly bone-headed Rolling Thunder marketing disaster that truly killed LBS (mainly through nearly killing AEG as a whole).

Ryan Dancey has helmed so many disasters.

I started at the beginning of Samurai, so I always feel like when I remember it the most fondly it's because of nostalgia goggles, but then other people tend to agree, so who knows?

So anyway, based on what I played, I'd say:

1) Samurai (The only real problems I remember from SE were a handful of wildly imbalanced personalities, such as a T2 Chags. Otherwise, when people complain about cards in SE, it's not because the cards were broken, it's because they were good and no one likes losing. Many unwarranted gripes this edition [and the last time Dishonor was legitimately fun].)

2) Emperor (Not as good as Samurai, but not as bad as Celestial. I don't have much to say good or bad, which in the context of the next choices, explains it's high ranking.)

3) Celestial (In a game designed to highlight individual personalities, a swarm playstyle is going to wreck things both mechanically and otherwise. That's exactly what happened. Overwhelming throw away spuds were super boring and super effective and that's basically this entire edition in a nut shell.)

4) 20F (Would be higher, but being incomplete hurts it)

5) Ivory (Force pump edition. So boring.)

*-Shout-out to Lotus Edition, as a ton of the particularly fun Samurai Edition strategies were dual-bugged LE cards. I can't speak to how good or bad Lotus was as it's own edition, but it helped put some fun "oomph" into Samurai.

I've played a number of arcs throughout the game's history.

1. Samurai - To me, Samurai had the best overall power level of any arc in the game's history.
2. Jade - My first arc was busted as all get out but it was fun to me (save for the sensei's as a way to 'fix' the brokeness)
3. Gold - Gold was very much powered down from Jade but it was a different and interesting at the time.
4. Lotus - Felt a lot like Jade and I enjoyed that kind of craziness.
5. Emperor - Felt a lot like Lotus and I enjoyed that kind of craziness.

20F

Ivory

Diamond

Gold

I should explain that I've only ever played Ivory and 20F, though I started collecting the game back at the end of Gold. (A guy came to our store demoing the game, and I was interested enough to start buying it. Unfortunately, he never showed up again, and no one else in my game group was interested in picking it up, so I pretty much just bought the occasional starter for the stories until Ivory, when I finally found a group that actually met and played. )